jtadams

1. Catalyze change when it makes sense; for instance, when spurring TOD is a realistic possibility. Respond to change when that makes sense, for instance, when gas prices spike to 2-3x their historical levels and give people incentives to reduce their dependence on cars and roads. They are not mutually exclusive approaches. But since much change is difficult to predict ahead of time, it doesn't make sense to me to put hard numbers on the percentage. Instead, be ready to do either or both as the opportunities present themselves. 2. Markets work. Use them insofar as possible. Privatize what you can, but be vigilant about avoiding corruption (e.g., privatized gains and socialized losses). They will serve both inner cities and suburbs, but differently, which is as it should be, as the needs of each are quite different. Some cities have multiple agencies but a high degree of cooperation and coordination among them. Learn from and emulate that insofar as it makes sense here. 3. Eliminate the "laws" that prevent regional cooperation. The rest should work itself out. There is a market for transport solutions to and from the outer counties, albeit most of it is going to be of the park & ride and reverse commute varieties; outer suburbs won't usually have the population density to support more.

Green space doesn't produce ridership. And 60% of transit ridership comes from walk-in trade. If you don't have residential, workplaces, retail, etc. within walking distance of transit, then your transit won't perform. And given rail is a higher capacity transit mode, it needs to have a higher density of uses within walking distance of stations. This is all fundamental Urban Geography 101 stuff I learned in college and have seen it proven time and again in my 30-year career since. A subsidized housing project can be TOD, as could any (industrial, warehousing, offices, market-rate housing, retail or, more likely a mix) depending on its design and site placement. A CMHA development doesn't mean the rise of the old King-Kennedy (aka Dodge City) projects or the Woodland Estates. Today, they are mixed income, subsidized and market units like Tremont Pointe or rebuilt Garden Valley Estates (including the new four-story apartment building at East 79th and Kinsman). It's similar to this one, South Pointe Commons, a permanent supportive housing/retail building on West 25th at Sackett Avenue, just north of Metro's main hospital. It's for disabled homeless people and it has a coffee shop on the ground floor... SouthPointeCommons_W25-Sackett_Cleveland by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr I spend a lot of time around there, and I had no idea whatsoever that this building contained CMHA housing. Good to see they appear to be learning from past mistakes.

Well, I've been pleasantly surprised to see the HealthLine become more successful by most measures than I expected it would be, particularly given that it still suffers from inadequate signal prioritization and a few other nagging issues. And looking back on it, I think it was the right decision (even though I hoped for light rail in the beginning). We were never going to get more light rail in the short to medium term; it was simply too expensive. It was either this or nothing. And I'm glad we have this. The obvious limiting factor with regard to BRT is capacity. Not really a problem for us today, but I continue to hold out hope that U.S. cities including ours will rebound eventually, and if the density of population and employment along the Euclid Ave. corridor were to increase sufficiently, we could find ourselves struggling with this same issue again. Rail projects typically take a very long time to build. As an admittedly pathological, but instructive example: the 2nd Ave. line in NYC, the need for which has been known for nearly a century, and is only now being built, while the Lexington Ave. line struggles to carry more traffic than the combined volume of the entire Washington Metro system. If there is ever to be rail, it will likely require years, perhaps decades, to gather the necessary funding and political will to make it happen. We will not have the luxury of waiting until the need is already upon us. We'll have to anticipate and plan for it well in advance, which of course runs the risk that density, demand, etc. could shrink again and leave us with what some might deride as yet another "rail line to nowhere." It's a tough call, well beyond my pay grade. But I'm guessing that, at some point within the next generation or two, someone is going to have to make it. This sounds defeatist. Sure building rail is difficult and expensive, but that's not a reason to reject it out of hand when rail is the best solution for rebuilding your city, creating jobs and high-density Smart Growth. Yes executing rail transit construction is a long and tedious process. But that's not a reason not to do it. Conservatives like to harp on bad transit examples to negative future transit development. Just because New York's 2nd Avenue subway has been a long, drawn out and poorly executed project covering decades, doesn't mean that all rail transit development isn't worthwhile. (and I'm sure once the 2nd Ave line is built, it will have a huge positive impact on the section of Manhattan that it will serve) Heavy rail subway construction is difficult, no doubt, and New York's plan is to build a long HRT through a heavily built up area in 21st Century New York is not nearly as easy as building elevated and subway lines in a turn of the 20th century New York of 3.5 million and a lot of undeveloped rural property in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens. In Washington, its taken a lot of hard planning, negotiation, construction and, yes, gazillions of dollar to build the DC Metro, but can anybody say it wasn't worth it? The Health Line is an improvement over the No. 6 bus it replaced, but it's not what it could have been had it been rail, as the article KJP highlighted above. The article highlights what we (really) already know. BRT systems like the HL are more similar to the buses they replace: that is, they are for short hop trips; and those relying on them for longer end-to-end type commutes, tend to be frustrated. We've heard the horror stories about slow the HL is from downtown to University Circle where the Red Line is twice as fast even though it does not give the door-to-door service the HL does (although the new UC-Little Italy will given the Red Line a much stronger hand)... LRT and HRT are used (and relied upon for much longer trips than BRT, which is the ultimate bus operation. Had the Dual Hub project been built as even light rail, it's impact on travel and high-density development in the Euclid corridor would be much more pronounced than with the HL. Maybe LRT someday will replace the HL; we can only hope... I'm just glad to see some well researched studies that disprove the bromide that BRT is just the same as Light Rail only cheaper. I'm not sure where you're getting the defeatism here. Part of my point is that BRT appears to be good enough for now but that the Euclid Corridor is one of the few that actually may be able to support something better in the future. And that we should look into this, sooner rather than later, so we don't get caught missing what might be a very narrow window of opportunity to build when it appears. I don't buy into the notion that rail will automatically transform low-density corridors into higher-density ones. Not automatically. Two main reasons: (a) zoning; (b) the need to remediate brownfields. We can't repeat the results of the Van Sweringens, because the conditions from which they benefited do not exist at present. So how do we fix that? Hint: zoning laws can be changed, if there is political will; suburban sprawl can be halted and even reversed if the conditions that caused it are eliminated; a common-sense approach to environmental problems can achieve much more than the way things are done now, and can (and does in many other countries) allow for reclamation and redevelopment of former brownfields in a safe and cost-effective fashion. Now, again, that is not defeatism. It's the kind of realism that you need if you want to make progress.

You're right about that. It would be served by rail if there was LRT of some sort down W. 25 into Parma... oh right, the Calabrese crew scuttled that idea in favor of more BRT studies. Your constant digs about the RTA are getting really old. I think he makes a valid point, and RTA's anti-rail policies are what's getting old. If everyone stopped talking about it, it would still be a problem, but we'd be even further away from a solution. This is a growth corridor and it's within Cuyahoga County. RTA should at least be looking at extending rail service there. I realize we have more pressing priorities for rail expansion, but at some point we do need southbound rail service. How can we expect this area of the metro to develop in a transit oriented way if transit is barely offered there? I'd love to see rail everywhere, but the reality is that it only comes close to being cost-effective when there is, either at present or during some foreseeable future, sufficient population and/or employment density to justify it. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find that even in Parma or Independence, and Broadview Heights is quite a bit less dense than that. Better bus service, perhaps including a handful of circumferential/circular routes to bring places like UC into a 2-ride trip for most RTA customers, is probably the best thing I could recommend even aspiring to in the short- to medium-term.

Well, I've been pleasantly surprised to see the HealthLine become more successful by most measures than I expected it would be, particularly given that it still suffers from inadequate signal prioritization and a few other nagging issues. And looking back on it, I think it was the right decision (even though I hoped for light rail in the beginning). We were never going to get more light rail in the short to medium term; it was simply too expensive. It was either this or nothing. And I'm glad we have this. The obvious limiting factor with regard to BRT is capacity. Not really a problem for us today, but I continue to hold out hope that U.S. cities including ours will rebound eventually, and if the density of population and employment along the Euclid Ave. corridor were to increase sufficiently, we could find ourselves struggling with this same issue again. Rail projects typically take a very long time to build. As an admittedly pathological, but instructive example: the 2nd Ave. line in NYC, the need for which has been known for nearly a century, and is only now being built, while the Lexington Ave. line struggles to carry more traffic than the combined volume of the entire Washington Metro system. If there is ever to be rail, it will likely require years, perhaps decades, to gather the necessary funding and political will to make it happen. We will not have the luxury of waiting until the need is already upon us. We'll have to anticipate and plan for it well in advance, which of course runs the risk that density, demand, etc. could shrink again and leave us with what some might deride as yet another "rail line to nowhere." It's a tough call, well beyond my pay grade. But I'm guessing that, at some point within the next generation or two, someone is going to have to make it.

Well, as one who has been both a regular rider and an occasional one over the years, I have a strong suggestion: do that, but make sure that the n-fare passes do not expire quickly. I used to keep 2 or 3 of the five-trip farecards in my wallet, but they expired, so I no longer do. An expiration date of 3 to 5 years is reasonable I think, but nothing less.

Not necessarily anti-rail. Pro-business. The target audience for Crain's are people who are part of Cleveland's business community, and who will generally support development, and especially downtown-focused development, that is *sustainable.* The question I would pose for those trying to make the case for continued or possibly even expanded rail operations would be this: what can be done, particularly right now when capital is dirt-cheap, to place these rail operations on a sustainable footing? Meaning that as much as possible of both operating and capital costs, preferably all of both, are returned to the community in the form of (a) fares and (b) TOD, job growth, etc. that verifiably results from the presence of nearby rail transit. If you want the support and cooperation of the business community, that is the case you will have to make. I think it can be done. I don't think it has been done to date, but I think it can be.

One need not agree with her views, attitude, or behavior, to understand that the cop's behavior was reprehensible, unjust, criminal, and far out of proportion to her, at most, VERY minor offense of not stopping to show her fare card; especially if she was asked to do so in a location (outside the proof-of-payment zone) in which she was not required to do so in the first place.

Probably not feasible given current safety standards. There are a LOT of mandatory signaling and fail-safe systems required to go completely driverless and my assumption is that the cost of those systems would be prohibitive in the case of an older system like ours.

I just don't agree with this argument. No one is forcing these people to live so far away from one of the region's most important employment center. This is a defeatist attitude that accepts that there's nothing we can do about sprawl. Rather than spending this money on a sprawl-enabling road project, why not invest it in revitalizing the neighborhoods surrounding University Circle? No one is "forcing" them, but "fighting sprawl" implies actually trying to force them to do the opposite. Why? Especially with tax money that is largely coming from them. The idea of forcing, or even "nudging" people to adopt lifestyles they don't prefer and using their taxes to do so is pretty much the definition of what the right opposes about the big government left. The OC doesn't even facilitate new sprawl. Its primary role may be to improve connectivity to the existing sprawl, but it also brings badly needed changes to the areas it traverses. How would "revitalizing the neighborhoods" be different from 60s style urban renewal. I very much dislike urban sprawl, and believe it to be unsustainable in the long term, but there is a right and a wrong way to fight it. Rather than trying to punish people who choose to locate in farflung suburbs, give them a reason to voluntarily come back. There are a lot of ways to do that. Making it as easy as possible for people to get to urban jobs is a worthy goal. Encouraging redevelopment of a destitute and largely abandoned part of town is also a worthy goal. Relieving congestion, before it becomes as bad as many other auto-oriented cities, is a worthy goal. If you don't do these sorts of things, then the city proper becomes perceived as a less attractive place to live, work, and start businesses, and then, you will soon find that more and more commutes are suburb-to-suburb, and that really isn't an optimal outcome for anyone.

One or more of the CSU line(s) should get you downtown, and then the HealthLine to University Circle. There is no good way I'm aware of to take RTA from Rocky River to the airport. There used to be north-south lines running with varying frequency through the West Shore suburbs, but most are gone now. If you really wanted to you could transfer to the Red Line from the CSU lines downtown, or if you're near the 26 or the Westgate Transit Center, then possibly one of the other lines, but it would be at least a 75 minute trip, possibly longer.

One wouldn't, if one understood that, like all other "law enforcement," the goal of "traffic enforcement" is to extort money from the relatively poor and give it to the relatively rich, not vice versa, and that most of these people are travelling to/from the West Shore suburbs and can easily afford to fight tickets, thus turning any such effort into a money-losing proposition. BTW, it would be the Lakewood PD, not Cleveland, at least from W. 117 west.

Road salt is the spawn of satan. Saves lives. I think those lives are well worth the extra wear and tear that it causes. Are you against spending more money on an alternative that would save even more lives? Because there are alternatives. And there wouldn't be the negative costs that come with road salt, which is damaging to everything. Including the trees and shrubs being re-planted on Clifton. I'd be all for it if the price were comparable. (It would have to be, or else cities would use less of it, and then we'd be back to people dying from preventable accidents.)

Road salt is the spawn of satan. Saves lives. I think those lives are well worth the extra wear and tear that it causes.

Understood. I'm speaking in very general terms about this whole alleged right-wing/left-wing dichotomy that is supposed to encompass the great issues of our time. Both miss the point. It should not be about how to spend other people's money, but rather how to make worthy and needed projects pay for themselves, insofar as possible. We need to think bigger. Funds from tolls are a great way to pay for the building and maintenance of roads, but, preferably, related ones. I don't see much connection between the Turnpike and the OC. But what if there were a toll booth at the south/west entrance of the OC Boulevard? I'd gladly pay two or three bucks for the convenience of not having to go through the congested and sometimes dangerous interections of 490/E.55 and E.55/Woodland/Kinsman, especially if there were EZPass lanes which didn't require long waits at the toll booths. I would like to see some of the funds benefit the neighborhood, more so than freeways usually do, but I'll admit to being at something of a loss as to how to do that. It is not an area you can just dump money into and make it all better. People there need access to education, jobs, and most importantly, some degree of law and order, which is sorely lacking there and in many other inner-city neighborhoods.

OK, so nothing recent or mainstream. Got it. EDIT: Even if it is still tied to Nader, I don't have a problem with it. I think this country would be a better place and actually have a government for & by the people had Nader had won the presidency a few years back, but now I'm steering this chat too far off the berm of the Opportunity Corridor. So feel free to respond to this statement in one of the political threads where I rarely venture..... We may not all be libertarians soon, or ever, but in the not too distant future, we will all have to adjust to a world in which it is no longer possible for a central government to tax, borrow, and spend as it does today, on the pet projects of left *or* right. And in that day, perhaps some of y'all will be more open to the ideas that libertarians such as myself have had for decades now on how we can fix the damage that this partisan spending - on both sides - has caused. Some of it will fix itself, but not all, and not necessarily as quickly as would be optimal. My suggestion is that we face this and begin now to plan for it. Without federal funding it would obviously not be cost-effective to build the OC. (To maintain it? Maybe. Hard to say for sure.) We will get to do so only because we can force people in other parts of the country, and people not yet born, to pay. We could do the a glorified #6 bus that's 5 minutes faster than the old one for the exact same reason. When that is no longer the case? Then it becomes necessary for someone - probably either a municipality, or a private investor - to be fully convinced that there will be a return on their investment, before any more new infrastructure like this gets built. Again, plan for this, or be left unprepared when it happens.

IMO, that is unacceptable. Reducing general-purpose lanes from two in each direction, to one, is obviously bad for congestion, but reducing that one lane to effectively zero, is WAY worse. There should have been enough HL-compatible vehicles purchased to account for breakdowns and such. And before someone jumps in and points out that they are in service 24/7, that is something that should have been anticipated as well. Obviously a vehicle that's in service nearly continuously is going to need more maintenance and service than one that is more lightly used. But, in fairness to RTA, it was probably not anticipated that the cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland would fail to follow through on their promises to properly synchronize the timing of the traffic lights; that probably has contributed to the overuse of the HL vehicles, not to mention much of the reason why on several major sections of the route, most notably the East Cleveland portion, they really aren't much if any faster than the regular #6 buses used to be.

You can hate big government or not. I don't much care either way. It isn't sustainable, and therefore it won't last. But I'd prefer if our cities, and the transit that helps to sustain them, did. And they can. On balance big government harms transit MUCH more than it helps. When Big Government goes the way of the former USSR, and it will, think of that not as a disaster, but a great opportunity, for transit, and for our region in general. It will be, and you will either see that, eventually, or get left behind by those who do. I'm a fairly intelligent person with an advanced degree. What the hell are you trying to say? Probably nothing that most people here will be capable of understanding, not because of lack of intelligence, but lack of perspective. But let me try one more time. Big, corrupt government hurts transit, especially in our region, much more than it helps, largely by massively funding the auto/road/oil/military complex, but also by distorting the decisionmaking process in countless ways. However much I may like the HealthLine - and I do - it is an example of both problems, and we can fix those problems, with regard to the HealthLine or to transportation in general, not by ignoring them but by recognizing them and plotting some path that gets us, affordably and sustainably, from where we are to where we would like to be in the future.

I'm more cynical on this. I think any injury to the status quo in federal spending (however necessary it may be) is going to hurt urbanism. Maybe it's analogous to the "too big to fail" mentality, but I think that the suburbs and the highway system is going to continue sucking up scarce resources no matter what happens. Even if it does, the fewer of those resources available to waste, the less cars and roads get subsidized, and the more likely it is that people and companies will find it attractive to locate themselves in or near cities rather than exurbs and undeveloped countryside, thus beginning to reverse historically anomalous land use patterns in the U.S. compared to nearly every other civilization in history. We transit advocates lose our paltry subsidies too, but that's just it. They are paltry compared to what the fedgov is doing for the auto and highway lobby. Loss of, say, 30% of funding across the board hurts them way more than it hurts us, if it even hurts us at all - my argument is that on balance it actually helps, because sprawl is inherently unsustainable and requires ever-increasing subsidies to continue, while transit, historically, did not (until that sprawl came along).

You can hate big government or not. I don't much care either way. It isn't sustainable, and therefore it won't last. But I'd prefer if our cities, and the transit that helps to sustain them, did. And they can. On balance big government harms transit MUCH more than it helps. When Big Government goes the way of the former USSR, and it will, think of that not as a disaster, but a great opportunity, for transit, and for our region in general. It will be, and you will either see that, eventually, or get left behind by those who do.

Could you please add a single fact to your next rant? The project cost $200 million. It rebuilt a century-old main street from the sewers up. It made a beautiful street scene. It provided a shot in the arm to a tired corridor which has since seen more than $4 billion in new development. Some of that admittedly would have happened anyway, but some of it wouldn't have. Nearly all of it was encouraged by the project, including new zoning overlays motivated by the project, to be sited and designed in a way to favor more than just car users -- pedestrians and transit users which make a city more urban and vibrant than be subjugated by the space-eating tyranny of the highly subsidized car. You are more than welcome to your opinions. But I sure wish you would learn *something* about the project before you opine on it. Cars should not be subsidized either. I agree that is part of the problem. Earlier 20th century century cities, though not without problems, were quite vibrant with very little if any subsidies for either cars *or* transit. And transit won out where it made the most sense (dense urban cores and their immediate surroundings). Cars won out where they were clearly the better choice (rural areas and smaller towns). A level playing field, with each mode of transport paying its own way, influences development in a truly and genuinely sustainable fashion, with little if any need for government involvement. Is there a way to get to a more level playing field at this point in time? Just a casual look around downtown CLE shows a mostly auto-centric city. Not at a local level and not right away. Most of the distortion comes from the idea that transportation should be handled by bureaucrats in Washington, rather than locally. HOWEVER: there is a limit to how much the feds can borrow from other nations, and when that borrowing stops, so does a great deal of the unnecessary federal spending. That starts the process. The challenge is that at that point we still have land-use patterns, infrastructure, and public expectations that have been dominated by 60+ years of auto- and suburb-oriented federal spending. Some of that, frankly, is not going to survive. As gas and road prices begin to approach their true cost, transit in and near cities becomes more viable, and the McExurbs become largely unsustainable. It could take a while, but sooner or later, land and home values will adjust to reflect the new reality that transportation is expensive, but drastically more so in those exurbs and drastically less so in denser urban environments.

Could you please add a single fact to your next rant? The project cost $200 million. It rebuilt a century-old main street from the sewers up. It made a beautiful street scene. It provided a shot in the arm to a tired corridor which has since seen more than $4 billion in new development. Some of that admittedly would have happened anyway, but some of it wouldn't have. Nearly all of it was encouraged by the project, including new zoning overlays motivated by the project, to be sited and designed in a way to favor more than just car users -- pedestrians and transit users which make a city more urban and vibrant than be subjugated by the space-eating tyranny of the highly subsidized car. You are more than welcome to your opinions. But I sure wish you would learn *something* about the project before you opine on it. Cars should not be subsidized either. I agree that is part of the problem. Earlier 20th century century cities, though not without problems, were quite vibrant with very little if any subsidies for either cars *or* transit. And transit won out where it made the most sense (dense urban cores and their immediate surroundings). Cars won out where they were clearly the better choice (rural areas and smaller towns). A level playing field, with each mode of transport paying its own way, influences development in a truly and genuinely sustainable fashion, with little if any need for government involvement.

I recall the 9 express taking 20 or less, even stopping. The 9 schedule says it takes 13 minutes to go from 105th to 19th on Euclid. The BRT schedule does not break down by stop, just the ends. 40 minutes from Windermere to downtown. Why was this money spent, again? Because they didn't want to run express buses down Chester or Carnegie, which would have resulted in a reliable 10 minute trip downtown. And they wanted to spend billions of dollars of other people's money, taken from them by force, the vast majority of whom do not benefit from it in any way, to enrich themselves. It was classic political pork. I like the concept of BRT, but it was never right for Euclid Avenue. What it needed was some common sense. Run local service on Euclid, and express service (including some feeding Euclid) on Carnegie and Chester. Problem solved, for very little if any $$ (actually it probably would have been a net positive for the region and would not have cost people in Alaska or Texas or Guam a penny).

That's where rail transit can, with the proper planning, be a tool for urban growth. A tool? Absolutely. A sufficient tool? Not in the absence of jobs, and hence economic growth, and hence a much more business-friendly, and particularly manufacturing-friendly, macroeconomic environment. If we continue to tolerate "governments" that go out of their way to be hostile to free enterprise, peace, and rule of law, then these desolate streetscapes will soon be emblematic of a whole nation full of dying and dead cities that no amount of transit can possibly rescue.

To my knowledge only West Park is the only station prior to W. 98 with downtown bus service (via the 22). Much of the downtown service that used to exist on other lines (e.g., 25, 75) was eliminated during the budget cuts circa 2008.